Being a Witch by Valeria Ruelas

Nowadays because witchcraft is becoming so mainstream it’s easy enough for someone to call themselves a witch. When you log onto Instagram, and search the hashtag “witchcraft” you will be bombarded with mainly images of crystals, white women in gothic fashion, herbs and tarot decks. But being a witch is more than just wearing black, having pretty tools and an altar. It’s about refusing to be powerless and held down by other people’s values and authority. Since embracing my identity as a witch the world has opened up with opportunity for me and I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. Being a witch has allowed me to have personal freedom and a fulfilling career as a self-employed tarot reader. I am also one of the few witches out there who believes that with the right dedication and knowledge, anyone can take up witchcraft and magick. I personally had to LEARN a lot of my craft from books and online resources because I wasn’t raised in a household where the craft was practiced, and I have come very far on this journey!

When I first moved back to New Orleans I had the pleasure of doing a presentation on modern witchcraft. My audience was largely people who weren’t familiar with anything magick or witch related. Many of these people still held beliefs and stereotypes that all witches are evil. In my presentation I provided this definition: A WITCH is a person (no gender attached) who uses energy to achieve desired outcome and often does this through the performance of ritual and magick, a witch is a person who knows their true power and is highly intuitive and connected to the divine and believes in the spiritual realm.

It would be ridiculous to view every witch as the same because there are thousands of cultures out there, and many of them have versions of “witches.” I’m Mexican and in my culture we call modern witches “brujas and brujos.” My ancestors, practiced astrology, shamanism and spiritual work very avidly, and so it is their traditions that have survived colonialism that I now use to heal myself and others. For me, a large part of being a witch is connecting to these ancient traditions, allowing myself to discover this knowledge within me BUT it also means embracing a part of me that holds a painful ancestral memory of religious persecution. As a witch, I am the living embodiment that nothing is strong enough to kill my ancestors’ spirit.

The longer I practice, the more I realize that being a witch is a true spiritual journey and it’s not all fun and games. Sometimes your spiritual path will show you many hardships in order for you to overcome them and be your best self. After all, if you have everything in life, then why would you use magick? No one ever said that connecting to spirit and natural forces would be a cake walk! Being a witch can also open you up to spiritual attack, so you have to be ready to protect yourself and fight of negativity.

For those of us who live in the US, luckily, there are not many active witch hunts and we are living in perhaps the safest time to be a witch. What I really love about witchcraft and its massive growth is that it is becoming a reason that women/femmes and other oppressed people are resisting traditional Christian values and are able to be more authentically themselves. I find that witchcraft is a very freeing spiritual path, and because of this, there is more room to clap back at the patriarchy and to EMBRACE the power of our bodies and supernatural abilities. When you’re a witch, you not only use magick as a tool, you BECOME magick. Little by little, your energy work will pay off and help you become your best self. Even though this journey can be hard, in the end it has the potential to show you power you never even knew possible. Witchcraft, is a return to our divine power and we will never be silenced again!

Follow Valeria Ruelas @themexicanwitch